
QVAERITVS^J^- 



THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE, 
THE BASIS OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE, 
ND THE LABOURS OF THE GERMAN SCHOOL 
m THAT FIELD— 
ARE THEY NOT OVERVALUED? 



BY 



T. HEWITT KEY, M.A., F.R.S., 

PROFESSOR OP COMPARATIVi; GRAMMAR IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON. 



BERLIN: 

A. ASHER (fc CO 

LONDON: D. NUTT. 

1863. 



QVAERITVR. 



THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE, 

AS THE BASIS OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE, 

AND THE LABOURS OF THE GERMAN SCHOOL 

IN THAT FIELD— 

ARE THEY NOT OVERVALUED? 



BY 



T. HEWITT KEY, M,A., F.R.S., 

PROFESSOR OF COMPARATIVE GRAMMAR IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE. LONDON. 




BERLIN : 
A. A S H E R k CO 
LONDON: D. NUTT. 
1863^ 




QVAERITVR 



THE SANSKRIT LANGUAGE, 

AS THE BASIS OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE, 

AND THE LABOURS OF THE GERMAN SCHOOL 

IN THAT FIELD — 

ARE THEY NOT OVERVALUED ?» 



T. HEWITT KEY, M.A., F.R.S., 

PBOFESSOR OF COMPABA.TIVE GEASIMAR IN DKIVERSITY COLLEGE , LONDON. 



I had thought at one time of placing at the head of this 
paper: "Doubts of a Non-Sanskritist". But on reflection 
it seemed desirable that the title should be more definite. 
If the words I have actually used, be thought by any one 
to savour of national ill-will, I must give the assurance that 
nothing could be more remote from my purpose or from 
my feelings. Those who have to deal with the classical 
languages, must be either blind or ungrateful, if they fail 
to acknowledge the deepest obligations to the Scholars of 
Germany. The editions of Greek and Latin authors that 
have appeared in England during the last half-century, have 
not been numerous, but even of these a large proportion 

* This paper, which grew out of an Introductory Lecture delivered at 
University College Nov. the 24*'^ 1862, -was read at the Philological 
Society of London January the 2^^ and 16*^; and was subsequently the 
subject of discussion at a special meeting on the 20^^, 

1 



2 OUR DEBT TO GERMAN SCHOLARS. 

have been simply reprints of German works. Again the 
Lexicons of the two languages that have issued from the 
English press during the same period, are for the most part 
so thoroughly of German material, that it would have been 
more creditable, if the title-pages had carried the words: 

"Translated from the German of with some few changes 

and additions". Again, if we turn our thoughts to the op- 
posite side of the English Channel, we find no great activity 
in the sphere of Classical, especially Greek Literature; yet 
what progress is visible there, is chiefly due to the energy 
of German, not French Scholarship, as witness the valuable 
collection of Greek Authors that has proceeded from the 
press of Didot. Nay, the high and indisputable reputation 
that Germany has won in this field, only renders the duty 
more imperative to watch lest failure or shortcomings on 
any side shoidd be kept from notice owing to that very 
prestige. Further I wish it to be observed that the term 
I have used, is 'overvalued', which is quite competible with 
an admission of great value; and again, I put what I have 
said in the form, not of a proposition, but of a question. 
It is only when that question is answered in the affirmative, 
or when the arguments put forward in this paper remain 
imanswered, that any the slightest damage can be done to 
the reputation of the philologers concerned. It would have 
been simply indecent, if the present writer had expressed 
his fears in the form of a direct proposition, conscious as 
he is that he comes to the enquiry wholly destitute of what 
may at first sight be deemed an essential requisite, a know- 
ledge of the Sanskrit language. Nay, he cannot pretend 
even to that smattering which may be obtained by a three 
weeks study of the language, and which has before now 
served to float a big book in the English market, a little 
sprinkling of the Devanagari character and a judicious use 
of the hard words 'Vriddhi, Anuswara, &c.', passing for 
profundity in the eyes of the uninitiated. Such little know- 
ledge as I have is that only which may be acquired in 
the perusal of grammars and glossaries and works of like 
nature. 



THE VEDAS. 3 

The question here naturally suggests itself, how it is that 
I have taken upon myself to enter into a contest for which 
I am confessedly so ill-equipped; and my answer is that I 
find the same suspicions which have found a way into my 
own mind entertained by many others, and those too gentle- 
men whose position as scholars gives great weight to their 
opinions, though, like myself, they are wholly wanting in 
the special qualification, a knowledge of Sanskrit. In every 
point of view then it seems desirable that the question 
should be raised. If our fears are ill-founded, it is well 
that they should be removed, and the road more thoroughly 
cleared of aU obstruction for the Sanskritist. If otherwise, 
it is surely good for the progress of philological science, that 
the matter should be thoroughly sifted. 

I do not purpose to enter into the domain of Sanskrit 
history and chronology, a task for which I am wholly un- 
fitted, especially as those who have the best qualifications, 
admit that it is involved in the greatest obscurity, nor in- 
deed could one expect easily to find materials for accurate 
investigation in such a Literature as that of the Yedas. The 
'Mantras' on the one hand, dealing for the most part with 
'the Devotional', and the 'Brahmanas' on the other with 
'the Ceremonial and Dogmatic', can scarcely be available 
for such a purpose. As to the Upanishads or the short ap- 
pended treatises I will be satisfied with a second-hand quo- 
tation from a work of a learned Hindu, that they "contain 
"some rude indications of philosophic thought, and like the 
"twinkling of the stars in a dark night may occasionally 
"serve as guides in a history of Hindu philosophy. They 
"do not however exhibit any great attempt at method, ar- 
"rangement, classification, or argument. Even there the 
"poetry predominates over the logic. Bold ideas abruptly 
"strike your fancy, but you find no clue to the associations 
"which called them forth in the author's mind, and search 
"in vain for the reasons on which they are based. Sublime 
"thoughts are not wanting, but they resemble sudden flashes, 
"at which you may gaze for a moment, but are immediately 
"after left in deeper darkness than ever. Nor are they free 

1* 



4 ANTIQUITY OF SANSKRIT. 

"from those irregular flights of the imagination in which 
"poets ^yith vitiated tastes delight to indulge, setting at 
"defiance all rules of decency and morality" (Banergea, 
Westminster Review, New Series, Vol. xxii, p. 463). 

An argument for the antiquity of the Sanskrit Language 
has recently been founded (Lectures on the Science of Lan- 
guage by Max Miiller, p. 204, third edition) upon certain 
passages in the Book of Kings and the Book of Job, but it 
is an argument which, as it appears to me, withers to the 
touch. All rests upon the statement that four articles im- 
ported from Judea in the days of Solomon, viz. the ape, 
the peacock, ivory, and sandal-wood, are called in the 
Hebrew text by names foreign to that language, but in- 
digenous in Sanskrit. But it is not an easy matter to prove 
that a word is indigenous in a language, and the Sanskrit- 
speaking race on their first entrance into the Indian pen- 
insula (for they are allowed on all hands to have been im- 
migi-ants) would naturally adopt the native, that is Non- 
Sanskrit terms for those objects which are peculiar to the 
country, provided indeed they had not already adopted them 
in the previous intercourse of commerce. Bat passing over 
this consideration, let us throw a glance at each of the four 
words, on which this important superstructure has been 
erected. Koph, the Hebrew for 'ape' is, we are told, "with- 
out an etymology in the Semitic languages, but nearly 
identical in sound with the Sanskrit hapV^ It is of course 
implied here, though not said, that the Sanskrit does supply 
a satisfactory etymology for its kapi. To supply the omission 
I turn to Bopp's Glossary, and there find that kapi 'ape' 
has for its root the Sansk. vb. kamp 'tremble', so that for 
some reason denied to us the ape was conceived by the 
Indian mind as 'the trembler'. Then ivory has for one of 
its Hebrew names shen hahbirn^ where as shen means 'tooth', 
habbim might well speak of the 'elephant', and this, it is 
said, "is most likely a corruption of the Sanskrit for ele- 
phant ihha, preceded by the Semitic article." If, as I sup- 
pose is the fact, Ma be a misprint for ibha, the resemblance 
is even then limited to the consonant, and we have nothing 



ANTIQUITY OF SANSKRIT. 5 

offered in the way of proof that this name for the elephant 
is the original property of Sanskrit. Thirdly tukhi-im^ in 
Hebrew 'peacocks', bears no doubt a tolerably close re- 
semblance to the Malabar name togei; and this "in turn 
has been derived from the Sanskrit sikhin 'furnished with 
a crest'.". Lastly the Malabar and Sanskrit name for sandal- 
wood is valguka; and "this valgu(kay\ the Professor says, 
"is clearly the name which Jewish and Phoenician merchants 
corrupted into algum^ and which in Hebrew was still further 
changed into almugr I would submit that at any rate the 
word 'clearly' is somewhat out of place in an etymon which 
involves four assumptions, the aphaeresis of v, the apocope 
of ka^ a paragogic m, and the metathesis of gum to mug. 
Even if true, such derivations have scarcely strength enough 
to serve as the foundation of so large a theory ^ 

But the same writer has elsewhere (History of Ancient 
Sanskrit Literature, p. 524) contended that the Vedas have 
an antiquity far older than the knowledge of writing. "The 
collection of the (Vaidic) hymns and the immense mass of 
the Brahmana literature were preserved", he says, "by 
means of oral tradition only." In another passage of the 
same work (p. 507) he tells us that "before the time of 
Panini, nay even when he himself wrote (sic) his great work, 
writing for literary purposes was absolutely unknown." To 
understand the full force of this proposition, to form an 
adequate idea of the extent to which the Professor would 
tax the mnemonic powers of the Brahmans, we must re- 
member that Panini, according to his own authority, was 
preceded by whole generations of Grammarians. In his 
recent Lectures on Language (p. 110) he says: "Those 
valuable lists of words, irregular or in any other way re- 
markable, the Ganas, supplied that solid basis on which 

^ I leave this as I wrote it, but I have since found that Prof. Max 
Miiller has borrowed the who^e argument from Lassen's 'Indische Alter- 
thumskunde, Vol. i, p. 538 (fee.', so that the setting alone is his own. It 
is true that he himself refers to this passage of Lassen; but his re- 
ference is so placed that a reader might well suppose the argument 
about 'ivory' alone to have been drawn from Lassen, 



^ WRITING UNKNOWN TO PANINI? 

successive generations of scholars erected the astounding 
structure that reached its perfection in the Grammar of 
Panini.*' But if the structure be "astounding" and "the per- 
fection of a merely empirical analysis of language", it seems 
not to be possessed of much that would be interesting to 
the mere European scholar, for the Professor concludes his 
panegyric with the words: "Yet of the real nature and 
natural growth of language, it teaches us nothing." 

As regards the Yedas themselves, one can readily imagine 
that religious feeling and poetical feeling combined may do 
much to invigorate the powers of memory, while the mere 
rhythm of verse contributes to lighten the task; but intense 
indeed must have been the feeling of duty which could in- 
duce Brahmans to commit to memory and there retain a 
complete library of the driest Grammarians. 

The whole argument then carries with it, as it seems to 
me, its own refutation; and in truth the challenge implied 
in the words: "I maintain that there is not a single word 
in Panini's terminology which presupposes the existence of 
writing" — has already received a twofold answer from my 
colleague, Professor Goldstucker (Panini, his place in Sans- 
krit Literature, 1861); first a self-refutation, quoted from 
the Oxford Professor's own words: "This last word Upikara 
(a writer or engraver) is an important word, for it is the 
only word in the Sutras of Panini which can be legitimately 
adduced to prove that Panini was acquainted with the art 
of writing;" and as my colleague observes (p. 17): "It is 
obviously immaterial whether another similar word be dis- 
coverable in his Grammar or not; one word is clearly suf- 
ficient to establish the fact." But he further produces from 
Panini's own work an abundant supply of terms which 
could have no meaning whatever when writing was unknown. 
Let me quote one more passage from the same admirable 
book (p. 14): "As according to his, Max Miiller's, view, 
Panini lived in the middle of the fourth century B. C. 
(pp. 245, 301 if.), it would follow that, according to him, 
India was not yet in possession of the most useful of arts 
at the time when Plato died and Aristotle flourished." 



MIMETIC ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 7 

I have entered into these details to show the unsatis- 
factory condition of the chronology of Sanskrit Literature, 
and at the same time I would suggest the question whether 
there should not be a little more caution in the acceptance 
of literary conclusions even from those to whom the English 
public has been accustomed to look as authorities above all 
controversy. 

But if we cannot have the advantage of a reliance on 
Literary history, we must be content to examine the in- 
ternal evidence supplied by the language itself and the 
dealings therewith alike of Indian and European authorities. 
As my own doubts, and I believe those of the friends to 
whom I have already alluded, were first raised by what 
appeared to us as most strange though generally sanctioned 
etymologies, I will proceed to produce some of these, limit- 
ing myself for the most part to a single class. 

Already Max Miiller (Lectures on the Science of Lan- 
guage, p. 369) himself quotes as an example of Indian 
etymology the derivation of the sb. kdka 'crow' from apa- 
hdlayitavya , i. e. 'a bird that is to be driven away', but 
adds that Yaska, another Grammarian, anterior to Panini, 
considered kdka to be an imitation of the bird's note. Whether 
the Professor himself adopts or rejects this mimetic origin 
of kdka^ his words do not enable one to say. But be this 
as it may be, in another Sanskrit noun, kdrava^ Lat. cor(o)vo- 
' raven', he steadily refuses to see, what for one I must 
regard as a still more exact imitation of the bird's note, 
viz. cor cor. Had he included in his view the Greek y.oQ-aa- \ 
he might perhaps have assented to Pott's doctrine (E. F. ii, 
506, 7) that crx in Greek substantives is a suflix of diminu- 
tival power, so that yioQ alone would be the root. He him- 
self, in his aversion to what he calls by way of disparage- 
ment the Bow- Wow theory, strives to deduce the whole 
family, kdrava, y.oQtov)], raven, (fee, from the Sanskrit verb 
rw, to which he ascribes "a general predicative power" as 

* We must not suppose the ancients in their nomenclature to have 
distinguished with modern accuracy the raven, the rook, and the crow, 
(See Mr. Wedgwood's paper on that subject.) 



8 THE 'go' family. 

expressing sound, "from the harshest to the softest", and 
so applicable "to the nightingale as well as to the raven", 
nay even to "the barking of dogs" and "the mooing of 
cows". In a note however, he hesitates between this etymon 
and one from the Sansk. Mm 'singer'. To the special 
honour of this last derivation the raven seems to be about 
as well entitled as the parrot or the peacock; and the de- 
duction of kdrava from ru, a general term implying 'sound', 
would probably be regarded by lawyers as 'void for un- 
certainty'. 

The same objection of excessive generality applies to the 
whole class of etyma with which I now propose to deal, 
viz. those of words ascribed to roots of various forms, but 
with the one meaning 'to go'. Thus the S. go {gav)^ the 
equivalent in power and probably in form of Lat. hov-, Gr. 
/9oi;-, as also of our own cow^ is deduced by Sanskritists 
of all classes, Indian and European, from a S. vb. ga 'go' ; 
and that this explanation of the word may not suffer for 
want of company, I may add the S. ild 'cow', referred by 
Bopp (Gloss. ^ s. V.) to the vb. il 'go'. Now that animals 
like the 'hare' or 'stag' should receive a name from their 
marked power of locomotion, is, at any rate on the logical 
side, admissible, and thus we may perhaps be ready to assent 
to the current etymologies of hai^e (Germ, hase) the Lat. 
lepos- and the Gr. eXacpo-, But the cow is scarcely entitled 
to put in a claim for such distinctions as against any other 
living creature. Strangely enough the same pair of words, 
go and ila, also signify 'earth', and these also have the 
same origin ascribed to them (Bopp, Gl. s. vv.). So also 
the Gr. yaia passes with Bopp (V. G. § 123) as standing 
for yaFia, and so an adjectival offspring of a sb. cor- 
responding to the S. go 'earth' and eventually of such a vb. 
as ga 'go'. In the same section S. gmd 'a name for the 
earth in the Veda-dialect' is deduced from the S. vb. gam 
'go'. Nay our own earthy though it comes immediately from 

^ I have preferred to draw from this work, although now somewhat 
out of date and superseded by other works, simply because it comes 
from the founder of the science. 



THE ^GO' FAMILY. 9 

our old English vb. ear 'plough', represented in Sanskrit 
by avj is traced ultimately to the S. r 'go' (Bopp, ibid., 
M. Mitller, Lectures on Language, p. 256, and Pott, E. F. 
i, 218). It would be an interesting fact, if such a series 
of at any rate consistent etymologies could be accepted as 
proofs that the Hindu mind had already discovered the 
motion of the earth, whether about its own axis or about 
the sun. But as it seems more probable that then as now 
there existed an inveterate tendency to treat the earth as 
the one fixed object to which all the movements around us 
are conveniently referred, we must look for some other ex- 
planation of the theory; and accordingly Bopp suggests that 
the movement of the earth must here be regarded as only 
'passive', in other words, the earth (erde) is 'the betrodden 
one' ('die betretene'). Though it does not visibly move 
itself, man and beast would be in an awkward predicament 
for locomotion if there were no earth to move upon. Before 
leaving the earth I ought to notice that Prof. M. Miiller 
believes (p. 257) our word aroma to be another ramification 
of ar 'plough' and r 'go', for does not Jacob say (Gen. 28, 
27) : "the smell of my son is as the smell of a field which 
the Lord has blessed"? 

From land I pass to water, but the same etymology pur- 
sues us. Thus the Ganges itself is the Sanskrit Gangd^ 
literally the "Go Go" (M. Miiller, ibid. p. 384). So we have 
S. salila 'water' from S. vb. sal 'go' (Bopp, Gloss, s. v.); 
S. ap 'water', the analogue of the Lat. aqu-a, from vb. ap 
'go', sarit 'river' from vb. sr 'go' (M. M. ibid. p. 253) and 
saras 'water' from the same vb. (ibid.). This last noun is 
by Bopp translated by the Lat. lacus and declared to be 
one with the Gr. hlog (cr. form Heg-) 'a marsh', in which 
case the notion of 'going' seems to disappear. Yet after all 
Sanskritists may contend that marshland, being half water, 
half land, has a double claim to a derivation from roots 
which denote 'going'. 

Take next the class of worms and reptiles. Bopp, for 
example (V. G. § 86, 1), refers the Lat. vermi- (== quermi-') 
and S. krimi to the S. vb. hram 'go'; the Germ, schlange 



10 THE 'go* family. 

'snake' to S. vb. smng 'go'; and the Lat. serpem^ S. sarpa^ 
tirst to S. vb. srp 'go' and ultimately to sr 'go'. Had any 
of these verbs meant 'go by little and little', the derivation 
would have been satisfactory, but the meanings given by 
Bopp in his Glossary to these verbs as vs^ell as to all their 
compounds furnish no authority for such an assumption. 
No doubt in his comparison of the vb. srp with kindred 
languages he dwells much on the idea of slow movement 
in those kindred languages, and again Prof. Wilson in his 
grammar, though he adds the meanings 'creep or glide', 
gives precedence to the general term 'to go'. I cannot but 
think however that the suffix of sip as compared to sr 
and that of the Lat. ser{e)p- with the varieties of EQ{e)n' 
and L. r-ep- {repere)^ Eng. c{e)r-ep {crep-t^ creep) ^ Germ. 
kr-iech-en^ and with an additional suffix of diminution cr-aw-l, 
represent the idea paulatim, as it seems to do in the Lat. 
car-p)- (see my paper on the suffix agh &c.. Trans, for 1856, 
p. 336). When I wrote what is there seen, I expressly 
stated that I w^as at a loss for the root ser 'go'. This I 
now find in the S. sr, although I still believe a form ker^ 
as seen in creep and kriech-en^ to be more genuine than sr 
with the sibilant. I am not deterred from regarding the 
two roots as substantially one by the fact that as a rule 
the guttural k or c of western Europe is usually represented 
by the palatal 5 of Sanskrit, not by that which occurs in 
sr and sip. 

Another class of words, which Bopp is disposed generally 
to refer to roots significant of simple movement, are those 
which denote time (da iiberhaupt die Zeitbenennungen moi- 
stens von Wurzeln der Bewegung stammen, V. G. § 69). 
For instance our word year^ old Germ, yar, together with 
what he regards as an equivalent in form, the Gr. coQa 
'season', is referred by him to the S. vb. ya 'go', but by 
Lassen and Burnouf it seems to S. vb. tr 'go'. Again the 
Goth, aics (crude form aiva) as well as its relatives Lat. 
aevum, Gr. ctuov , is deduced by Bopp, Graff, and Kuhn 
from S. vb. i 'go' (ibid.). The i might perhaps not have 
passed with the ill-informed as forming the kernel of these 



THE 'go' family. 11 

words; but all is accounted for; the initial a, it seems, at- 
tains its position through 'Guna', and all that follows the i 
(or e) is to be regarded as a suffix. In spite of such a 
combination of authority I am still disposed to prefer my 
own etymology of aevicm from the Lat. aiige- (for the vowel- 
change compare the variety seen in the allied ae^-co and 
av^-av-to) with 'growth' for the original sense, as exhibited 
in the well-known line, Crescit occulto uelut arbor aeuo, 'grows 
like a tree with growth concealed'. The Lat. saeculum is 
also referred by some Sanskritist to a vb. signifying 'to go', 
but as I have mislaid my authority, I will proceed to an- 
other Latin noun. As Bopp (Gloss, s. v.) considers S. amati 
'time' a derivative from am 'go', so he is also inclined to 
deduce from the same stem the Lat. annus (as standing for 
amnus) as well as the Gr. evog. That amniis was in fact 
the older form of annus is proved alike by the derived 
sol-emni-s and by the Oscan or Umbrian amno-; but to the 
derivation from a vb. 'to go' I would oppose that other de- 
rivation which connects it with the Lat. prep, am 'round', 
German um. The very idea of a year implies a circle, and 
the words annulus 'a ring' and the noun anus with a long 
vowel, seem to complete the proof. On the same principle 
the word year itself, like i/ar-d 'an enclosure' and gar-d-en 
&c., claims kindred with many words denoting a circle, as 
XOQ-TO, hor-to-, ZOQ-0-, cor-o-na-^ cir-co-. The initial change 
between a Gr. /, Lat. A, and a g (y) in German and English 
is in accordance with the usual law, as seen in xO^ag, heri^ 
hesterno-, gestern, yesterday. 

So much for the alleged deduction of substantives from 
Sanskrit verbs signifying 'to go'. But in the formation of 
secondary verbs also the roots i 'go' and yd 'go' are thought 
by Bopp well fitted to play important parts, as for example 
in furnishing suffixes by which verbs are converted into 
passives (§ 739) and causals (§ 740). As regards the former, 
if hord ydi^ to take Bopp's own example from the Bengali, 
have for a literal translation 'I am made' ('ich werde ge- 
macht'), as given by himself, then gemacht is by itself 
already a passive, just as verloren is in the modern German 



12 THE 'go' family. 

cjehen verloren^ literally Ho go lost'. We too may say 'be- 
come detested' or 'become fascinating', where the distinction 
between the passive and the active idea turns upon the ac- 
companying participle, not upon the word 'become'. Again 
Bopp's illustration from the Latin amatum iri is surely not 
applicable. If the principle, for which he is contending, 
be valid, we ought already to have a passive in the in- 
dicatival phrase amatum eo 'I am going to love', but this 
is a mere future of the active. The introduction of a pas- 
sive of eo, whether in the indicative as amatum itur or in 
the infinitive as amatum in, is only a convenient mode of 
exhibiting an impersonal verb, equivalent to the French 
o?i va aimer. The examples of veneo and pereo, quoted by 
Bopp, are at first sight more to the purpose, and he would 
have done well to strengthen his case by comparing them 
with vendo and perdo. Yet after all venire, standing for 
venum ire, means probably 'to go into the window' and so 
'be exhibited for sale' which certainly is more truly the 
meaning of the phrase than 'to be sold'. Again perire 'to 
come to an end', like the English go to the dogs or the 
Greek eqqe eg xoQaxag, contains no doubt what is virtually 
a passive idea, but this arises from the combination with 
the ;:>^r and the eg xoQaxag &c. That 'go' does not carry 
in itself the idea of a passive, is clear from our own phrases 
'go to the Bar' or 'into the Church' or 'into business'. 
Curtius (Beytrage p. 329) goes still farther and conjectures 
that the O^r] which appears in the aorist and future of Greek 
passives, is connected with the S. vb. yd 'go', in which 
however all resemblance seems limited to the long vowel. 
I pass then from the passive. 

The causal mood of the Sanskrit verb, as well as the 
tenth conjugation in general, having for their distinguishing 
character the syllable ai/\ Bopp's mind is divided by a doubt 
whether this suffix should be referred to the vb. i 'go' or 
t 'wish'. The latter one would think is far better fitted for 
the formation of a desiderative mood, which, it seems, is 

> Of causals some make ay the suffix, some ya. 



THE 'go' family. 13 

a general appendage to the Sanskrit verb. Nor does i 'go' 
at first sight appear a satisfactory element for the purpose 
of constituting a causal verb; but we are assured by Bopp 
(§ 740) that several Sanskrit words which denote 'motion' 
at the same time denote 'making'. Whether the particular 
verb i has this convenient privilege, he does not stop to 
tell us. Assuming however that it has, we have before us 
a strange combination, that roots expressive of 'going' are 
alike fitted to form passives and to form actives. 

But further although the causative idea is declared to be 
the character of the tenth conjugation, I find little proof 
of this in the list of 57 verbs quoted by Prof. Wilson in 
his Grammar, for of all these at the utmost one in five can 
be explained as containing the idea of 'to make'. Thus the 
first ten in the series are translated by the English verbs 
'steal, disrespect, hurt, send, wink, speak, play, be feeble, 
be able, sound'. I am not then surprised to find in § 772 
such a sentence as "It deserves however notice that in 
Sanskrit denominative verbs in ya * occasionally avail them- 
selves of the causal form without any causal meaning." My 
own feeling is that the original notion paulatim resides in 
«?/, and that it is the Sanskrit variety of that suffix which 
1 have discussed at length in my paper on agh or ag^ the 
passage of a ^ between vowels {aydmi) into a y being a 
common occuiTence. On this theory the meaning may well 
pass into that of frequentative or continuous. But leaving 
this question open, if we accept that one of Bopp's two 
explanations which finds in the suffix of the so-called Sans- 
krit causals or tenth conjugation the root i 'go', we shall 
have to assign to this use of the word a somewhat vast 
domain in the Classical and German Languages, for Bopp 
connects with the same type all the vowel-verbs of the 
Latin, at any rate the first, second, and fourth conjugations 
of that language (§ 745 c.), all the Greek verbs in eco, aw, 
00), a^co, Ltio (§§ 109 a. b., 749, and 762), together with the 
particular verbs /?aAAw; OTellco, takho, and ir^iit', and lastly 

' See the note on the preceding page. 



/7 



u 

all the weak verbs of the German stock (§109). A few 
of these verbs specially noticed by Bopp himself may claim 
a few words. We are assured that the Latin facio = S. 
Inw'dydmi^ literally 'I make to be'; iado — ydp-dydmi, 'I 
make to go' ; doceo = c'/hdp-dydmi 'I make to know' ; Q^apio 
= rdp-dydmi 'I make to give' (§ 747). It seems somewhat 
damaging to this theory that the suffixes (i or e) of the 
Latin contribute but little to the formation of the causative 
idea, seeing that fac-^ iac-^ doc-^ rap- already express the 
full notion of 'making, throwing, teaching, robbing' ; as may 
be seen in the ioxm^ fac-ere, iac-ere^ rap-ere^ and mfac-tus, 
iac-tus^ doc-tns, rap-tus. Yd-p-dydmi is thought to possess 
a second suffix of causation in its ^, so that yd 'go' is the 
real base of the verb ; and if this case be doubtful, a causal 
77 is declared with greater certainty to be an element in 
(jhd-p-dydmi 'I make to know', ghd (or in English characters 
jnd) being what Bopp is pleased to call a root-verb, the 
equivalent of our hiow. But of this jnd more hereafter. 
To place Bopp's doctrine clearly before me, I throw aside 
the equivalent portions eo and dydmi., and there results the 
equation Lat. doc = S.J7idp. The palatal/ of the Sanskrit 
is with reason assumed to be a corruption of a medial 
guttural (/ or /. Then doc is to be proved equal to yndp. 
I make no difficulty about the final consonants, for a Lat. 
c habitually corresponds to a S. p. But there still remain 
three problems for solution, to identify the d with ^, the 
short with the long a, and to account for the appearance 
of n in the Sanskrit or its disappearance from the Latin. 
For the first Bopp simply quotes the instance J?]'jiit]T7](} 
== n^-^o^T,.^; on the difference of vowel he says nothing. 
The difficulty as to the nasal is disposed of by the assurance 
that for ghd-nd-mi 'I know' there occurs an actual gd- 
nd-mi^ and that in Persian there exists the form dd-ne-m 
* I know'. But surely the asserted loss of an n from gnd- 
nd-mi, when followed so closely by a second n, is but a 
poor justification for the disappearance of an n in doc for 
dnoc. For one then I must regard the doc of doceo as better 
explained within the limits of the Classical languages by 



THE 'go' family. 15 

dec of delco (= dlco) and dstx-vufii^ by the day. of di-da^x)- 
Gxco, St-dax-Tog, and dctx-zvlog, by the die of di-dic-i and 
fZi]^ of dig-itus. But if 1 must look to the Sanskrit, here 
too I find a thoroughly admissible representative in the yb. 
dis 'show' with that palatal s which regularly corresponds 
to a Western Z:-sound; and indeed Bopp himself I find, in 
his Glossary, regards this root dis as one with the root of 
dtixvvf.u and the Lat. dico\ 

The 2> of ^'«i^- or rapi-, as also that of the S. rdp-aydmi^ 
is again treated by Bopp as of causal power, and he finds 
in his root rd 'give' only a variety of da 'give'. Thus 'to 
give' and 'to cause to give or rob' owe their marked dif- 
ference of meaning to the causal suffix, not that this is an 
essential matter with him, for this same root dd or rd is 
thought by him to be identical with the S. vb. 7a, to which 
simple form is ascribed the double meaning of 'to give' and 
'to take', a mixture of ideas that might lead to inconvenient 
results ^ 

So much for the value to the Sanskritist of his roots 
signifying 'to go' in the way of etymology; and the stock 
is no small one. Taking of ihQ ten conjugations the first 

* As some friends well acquainted with Sanskrit could scarcely believe 
that a writer like Bopp could have published such 'extravagancies', I 
will quote his very words (§ 747): "Kami ich aber das c der genannten 
Form {facio) nicht mit dem skr. causalen p vermitteln, so glaube ich 
doch dem Lateinischen noch ein anderes Causale nachweisen zu konneu, 
worin c die Stelle eines skr. p vertritt, namlich doceo, welches ich im 
Sinne von ich niache wis sen auffasse und fur verwandt mit disco 
(eigentlich ich wiinsche zu wissen) und dem gr. itSdrjv, didctauM 
halte. 1st das d dieser Formen aus g entstanden (vgl. Jrjuijji^o aus 
rrjurjTTjn) , so fiihrfc doceo zum skr. gndp-dyd-mi, ich mache wissen 
(Ja-na-mi ich weiss fiir gna-nd-mi) und zum pers. dd-ne-m ich weiss. 
Als ein Beispiel eines lat. Causale, worin das urspriingliche p unver- 
andert geblieben ware, erwiese sich rapio, im Fall es dem skr. rdpdydmi 
ich mache geben entspricht, von der Wz. "^ rd geben, die, wie 
mir scheint, nichts anders als eine Schwachung von dd ist. Auch kommt, 
sowie neben dd eine erweiterte Form dds besteht, neben rd im Veda- 
Dialekt rds vor. Mit rd und dd scheint auch ihrem Ursprunge nach die 
Wz. Id identisch, welcher die Bedeutungen geben und nehmen zuge- 
schrieben werden." 



16 THE 'go' family. 

alone, and again limiting myself to the series which Professor 
AVilson quotes in his grammar as 'the most useful verbs of 
this conjugation', I find just twenty, viz. 1. '^S[^^aj 'to go'; 
2. "^ at 'to go' ; 3. -^ 2 'to go' ; 4, ig du 'to go' ; 5. "^^^ 
nkh 'to go'; 6. "^ r 'to go', 'to gain'; 7. "^paf ;:;' 'to be 
straight' or 'honest', 'to gain', 'to go', 'to live' ; 8. -gpj^^ kram 
'to go', 'to walk'; 9. im^ gam 'to go'; 10. f^^? vichchh 
'to go'; 11. ^ char 'to go'; 12. -^^^ dhauk^'to go'; 
13. Tf^pat 'to go', 'to fall'; 14. -gj^ sad 'to wither' or 
'decay'; 'to go', with this appended: When the verb means 
'to go' the causal retains the final, -^jjirafTy sddayati 'he causes 
to go', or 'drives'; 15. ^ sad 'to decay', 'to be sad', 'to 
go'; 16. i^[^sas] 'to go';^ 17. ^\{^sidh 'to go'; 18. ^ 5f 
'to go'; 19. ^srp 'to go', 'to creep' or 'glide'; 20. -^if^ 
skand 'to go' ''or 'approach'. 1 should have made some ai 
dition to this list, had I included those verbs which only 
express a more special or limited form of motion, as 'per- 
vade, jump, hasten, run, gallop, approach, wander'. 

With such an abundance of verbs to draw from, a philo- 
loger should the more hold himself bound to proceed with 
caution, and so take care that the logical connection between 
the root and the supposed derivative should be well-marked. 
Whether the examples I have quoted exhibit such caution, 
1 leave to others to decide. Lastly I think it right to re- 
peat that by confining myself almost wholly to those in- 
stances of bold etymology which deal with verbs signifying 
'to go', I avoid the charge of selecting instances favourable 
to my view. Indeed without some such limitation, it would 
be an easy matter to pick holes in any of the most care- 
fully elaborated philological works, for the most cautious 
etymologer is apt to be carried away at times by tempting 
theories. In the next section of my paper I purpose more 
particularly to consider Bopp's celebrated work, the 'Ver- 
gleichende Grammatik', in its general system. 



In the short discussion which followed the reading of the 
above, it was replied on one side that the idea of 'to go' 
was precisely that which was well adapted to denote an 



THE 'go' family. 17 

active verb. To this I answer that a vb. 'to go' was equally 
claimed for the special formation of passives; but in truth 
the argument seems to me upset by its very generality. 
What is fitted to denote every form of action, is for that 
reason unfitted to denote any form of action. The very 
essence of language is distinction or difference. Accordingly 
the other answer to the difficulties I had raised was that 
although simple 'going' is commonly assigned as the mean- 
ing of the verbs I have quoted, yet in truth each of them 
originally denoted some special form of going. I will only 
reply to this that I took the verbs with the meaning at- 
tached to them by the several authorities from whom I was 
quoting. But over and above this, when the discussion was 
brought to the individual substantives, I found that the 
Sanskrit scholars who were present, employed in the defence 
of the Indian etymologies a vagueness as complete as that 
expressed in the general term 'going'. Thus go and ild 
'the cow', and go and ild 'the earth' were said to be well 
entitled to such derivation, as being in the Indian mind 
the centres of activity most important to man. 

I take the opportunity of making a slight addition to the 
paper. As sr^ according to Wilson's Grammar (p. 200), at 
times signifies 'to go quickly' or 'run', I am the more justi- 
fied in attributing to the suffixed p of srp the power of 
paulatim. At any rate it has no causal power here. Further 
if the Sanskrit vocabulary could deduce from a verb signi- 
fying 'to run' by the addition of this suffix a secondary 
verb srp 'to creep', I am justified in connecting our own 
cr-ep (whence creep and crep-t)^ as regards its root, with 
the base of the Dorsetshire hir-n = A. Sax. yrn-an 'to run', 
and that base, /»V, corresponds of course to the Lat. cur- of 
curro. Again if the S. vb. sal 'go' is one with the vb. sr 
'go', we have the analogue of this sal in the Greek alXo(-iai 
and Lat. salio, whence sal-tu-s 'a sheep or cattle rmi\ I 
am the more inclined to attach some value to this con- 
jecture, because as fal of fallere 'to cause to fall' seems to 
furnish the only root for fors fortis, so does saU for sors 
sortis 'that which leaps from the urn' (situla), a noun, from 

2 



18 TIIR VERGLEICHENDE GRAMMATIK. 

which has come the verb sortiri of tlie Latin and the verb 
mrtir (with a very different power, more akin to the original 
root) of the French. Lastly let me observe that if the 
Sanskritists had been contented to derive sarit 'a river' 
from a root sr 'go' or rather 'run', there could have been 
little objection, our owni terms 'current' and 'watercourse', 
Bull's 'Kun', and 'runlet' exhibiting a similar origin. Such 
terms as saras 'marsh or marshland' and ap 'water' have 
not the same justification. 



SECOND PART. 



It would be to shrink from the task I have undertaken, 
were I not to take into special consideration the great work 
of Bopp, who appears with something like general consent 
to be entitled the founder of Comparative Grammar as a 
science : and the claim upon my attention is only the stronger, 
that his 'Vergleichende Grammatik', the first portion of which 
was published in 1833, has been recently reprinted with 
some changes and considerable additions (1857-60). 

Here, as in wdiat I have already said, I shall without 
further apology for my temerity proceed to state unre- 
servedly the objections that have presented themselves to 
my mind, not expecting those objections to be accepted as 
valid, but desirous that they may attract the notice of 
scholars whose more intimate acquaintance with the subject 
will enable them to detect any errors I may have committed. 
The contest is happily one in which the victorious and the 
defeated must alike be gainers, the one object of both parties 
beiug to promote the cultivation of the science of language. 

First of all then 1 find in the very title of the commencing 
chaptei- (Schrift- und Laut-System) what appears to me un- 
philosophical, viz. the precedence given to writing over sound. 
Over a large portion of our globe there exist whole races 



WILLIS'S EXPERIMENTS NEGLECTED. 19 

possessed of the faculty of speech, but without any know- 
ledge of written symbols; and indeed no small part of the 
population even of this country is in this position. But I 
should have passed over this matter, if the error, so to 
call it, had not told unfavourably on the arguments that 
follow. The very first paragraph in the chapter gives to 
tlfree of the vowels a special character, which, as it appears 
to me, is not due to them. Thus the title of original vowels 
(Urvocale) is assigned to «, i, tr, and this, I believe, on 
no other ground than that the Sanskrit alphabet had special 
characters for these, w^hen the sounds of e and o may have been 
denoted by combinations of the first three, much as the 
French language employs its diphthongs ai and au as simple 
vowels. Had the school of philology founded by Bopp 
looked upon the materials for oral language as belonging 
to the domain of physical science, and w^hoUy independent 
of those other forms of language which are addressed to 
the eye, such an error could not have occurred. In particular 
I must repeat the regret, which I already gave expression 
to in the year 1852 (Proceedings, Vol. 5, p. 192), that the 
valuable paper on Vowel-sounds which was read by Professor 
Willis before the Cambridge Philosophical Society (Nov. 28, 
1828 and March 16, 1829), seems to have been wholly 
unnoticed by the leading Scholars of Germany. At any rate 
I for one ' have never yet come across the slightest allusion 
to this paper or to the principles established in it in any 
Gennan writer, while on the other hand I have read much 
from this quarter that would never have been written by 
any one acquainted with the results of Mr. Willis's experi- 

^ I find I have not done justice to German scholars in this remark. 
In Dr. Bindseil's Abhaudlungen ziir allgemeinen vergleichenden Sprach- 
lehre (Hamburg 1838) p. 84 reference is made to Professor Willis's paper, 
and from Ihe appended note I learn that the paper itself was reproduced 
in the German language in Poggendorffs Annalen der Physik und Chemie. 
Still Dr. Bindseil himself seems to have been satisfied with a bare re- 
ference, making little or no use of the principle, nor does his work appear 
to have met with much notice among his countrymen. It stopped ab- 
ruptly with the first volume, although this contains only a general in- 
troduction and a treatise on gender. 

2* 



20 FORMATION OF VOWEL-SOUND. 

ments. Nay I do not recollect to have seen in any of their 
prominent works in the field of philology any reference to 
that physiological organ which may literally be called the 
pri/mim mobile of human speech, I mean the two chordae 
vocales. Now that Professor Czermak of Prague by his 
simple apparatus has enabled the enquirer to witness the 
action of these musical strings in the living man, we m^y 
hope that the study of oral language may be placed on its 
proper basis. It will then be laid down as the first dogma 
that as vowel-sounds constitute the substance of language 
(for brevity I drop the word 'oral', which is the only form 
here under consideration), so the character of any vowel 
depends almost wholly on the distance for the time Ijetweeu 
the chordae vocales and the margin of the lips, in other 
words on the length of the vocal pipe, the position of the 
tongue being of no moment so long as it does not close 
the passage of air. So thoroughly definite and mathematical 
is the character of the physical experiments, on which Pro- 
fessor Willis's results are founded, that he has given numerical 
values to the distances that belong to such of the vowels 
as are most familiar to English ears. At the same time as 
the number of points in a line is infinite, so the vowel- 
sounds pass by imperceptible gradations from the one ex- 
treme i (the sound in feet) to the other extreme u (or oo 
in boot). Thus it is wholly owing to the imperfection, yet 
necessary imperfection of alphabets, that there is but a 
limited set of symbols for vowel-sound. The number itself 
is essentially infinite; and it was therefore a subject of 
amusement as well as regret to hear some few years ago 
that a conclave of learned philologers was then sitting in 
London to determine, among other high matters, what was 
the full number of vowels. 

But the vowel-order 2, e, a, o, u (with the sounds which 
prevail on the continent), as i-esulting from Professor Willis's 
experiments, would have supplied the German philologers 
with a principle capable of solving pretty well all the 
problems that arise in connection with the "Vocalismus', 
not merely of the Indo-European family, but of language 



ASSIMILATION OF VOWELS. 21 

in general. In the paper already referred to (Vol. V, 
pp. 191-204) I have shown in some detail that it explains 
the umlaut and ricck-uinlaut so-called of German philology, 
the formation of plurals in English &c. by what Grimm 
calls 'motion', that is an alteration of the root-vowel, as 
in geese from goose ^ and generally the assimilation of ad- 
joining vowels so familiar in all the Tatar languages and 
prevalent to a considerable extent in the Keltic, Teutonic, 
and Classical languages, to say nothing of others. In p. 203 
of the paper, I gave from my colleague. Professor Maiden, 
a tabular view, showing the full development of the principle 
in the changes of Greek vowels and diphthongs. And I 
have little doubt that the mysterious Guiia and Vriddhi of 
Sanskrit are simply results of the same law. 

No doubt Bopp has allusions to the principle of vowel- 
assimilation, but these are altogether incidental. Thus it 
is only when he passes from the Sanskrit (§§41, 42) to 
deal with the Zend, that he notices some cases where the 
presence of a i/, i^ or e aifects the vowel of an adjoining 
syllable, and in § 46 mention is made of a similar euphonic 
influence belonging to a Zend v (w). But these are matters 
which should not be treated as peculiarities of the Zend. 
The philologer is bound to state the law of vowel-assimi- 
lation in its broad simplicity. 

But there is another point in which Sanskritists seem to 
have been misled by the habit of looking at language in 
its written aspect. They ascribe to the Sanskrit, in ac- 
cordance no doubt with Indian authority, two vowels, r and 
/;•, which at any rate do not present themselves in the 
vowel-series of the Cambridge Professor. Moreover it is 
admitted that this vowel /• is closely related to the ordinary 
liquid r. May I propose as the probable solution of the 
whole difficulty the following? It is well known that the 
two liquids r and I often lead to the disappearance of an 
adjoining vowel, most persons would say to a metathesis 
of the vowel, a doctrine which I hold to arise from an 
inaccurate view of the matter, though this for the present 
is not important. Our own thorough^ for example, appears 



22 SANSKRIT ALPFIABET. 

in the two shapes through Eng. and durch Germ. Again in 
our provinces the form hrid is at times used, where the 
prevalent language prefers bird; so lyretty and perty coexist. 
The J.atin too has trifc- and toni-o-^ and the Greek O^Qaoog 
and xh(()U()g, with but little distinction of meaning and no 
distinction of origin. In such cases it is convenient to have 
a notation which will readily adapt itself to the two varieties 
of pronunciation; and on this principle it would not have 
been imwise to employ such a form as bi^d, 'prty, to re- 
present at once bird and brid, jjerty and pretty. The Slavic 
languages are not less given to such varieties than others; 
and accordingly words without any represented vow^el occur 
in the Bohemian vocabulary, as krt 'mole', krk 'neck', bib 
'blockhead', wlk 'wolf. Yet Dobrowsky does not on this 
account class r and I with the vowels of the language. 
Possibly the habit of virtually dropping the letters r and /, 
as in the case of bird in the mouth of a Londoner (bbd)., 
and talk^ calm generally, as w^ell as the Fr. meilleur, may 
have had its counterpart in India, and so have lent some 
encouragement to the doctrine that they are vow^els. 

But to return to the ordinary vowels, if a language is 
limited to three symbols for their representation, it is a 
matter of course that a should have a first preference, be- 
cause lying in the middle of the series it is for that very 
reason the easiest to pronounce and consequently the mos't 
common; and after a the vowels i and u have the next 
claim, as occupying the two extremities. 

It has also been urged that the Sanskrit alphabet has a 
special claim to our consideration in its philosophic com- 
pleteness. But this claim is open to grave doubt, seeing 
that it appears to have been without any character for the 
sound, if indeed it possessed the sound itself, that is heard 
in the initial consonants of our English thin and thine, fat, 
vat, m the two consonants of the Fr. juge and the final of 
the German cinfach. On the other hand it appears super- 
Huously rich in its ten asperates distributed through the 
so-called gutturals, palatals, cerebrals, dentals, and labials; 
that IS, if our informants be right in pronouncing these 



BOPP ON ROOTS. 23 

asperates as we pronounce the italic consonants of blocHouse, 
lo^/iouse, coa<?Moiise, bric?^^7iOuse, car^Aouse, giiar(i/iOuse, 
chopAoiise, clu5Aouse. If such be the correct pronunciation, 
the non-asperate character together with the simple h might 
surely have sufficed. I have also assumed that ^ (^va of 
German Sanskritists ) corresponded to an English w. But 
if it be really a v, then ^ w is wanting; if it be at one 
time a 2J, at another a w^ then we have another defect in 
the alphabet, two uses of a single symbol. But these very 
difficulties about the pronunciation seem to be valid reasons 
why we should select our primary facts from the known 
sounds of living tongues, rather than draw from alphabets 
of ancient date, no matter how venerable, in which the 
problems of pronunciation must to a considerable extent 
be full of difficulty, if not insoluble. 

The second main-heading in Bopp's work is "On roots" 
(von den Wurzeln). As regards the preliminary discussion 
which treats of the distribution of languages into classes, 
I will confine myself to the remark, that as in the preced- 
ing chapter, so here again the author appears to have been 
led astray by the consideration of written language. No 
doubt the Chinese is to the eye monosyllabic. To the ear 
not so, for it is well known to those who have learnt to 
speak the language in China itself, that it abounds in di- 
syllabic and polysyllabic words, whose unity, as with us, 
is denoted by the possession of a single accent. Thus Bopp 
is simply wTong in his statement of facts about the Chinese 
language (§ 108, p. 201, note); and again his definition of 
the Semitic family as one having disyllabic roots, is at 
variance with the doctrine now maintained by many of the 
first Hebrew Scholars that these apparent roots are in truth 
secondary forms. And indeed the Hindostani furnishes an 
instructive parallel, for here too it seems the existing verbs 
cannot be reduced to forms of less than two syllables, un- 
less we pass from the limits of the Hindostani to the parent 
Sanskrit. 

I must also point to another instance of error similarly 
caused. The peculiar notation employed for Hebrew words 



24 BOPP'S PRONOMINAL ROOTS. 

in which symbols for consonants play the most important 
part and the habit of denoting variations of meaning to a 
great extent by mere variation of vowels, as katul 'killed' 
with a fern, ktul-ah^ and kotel 'killing' with a fern, kotl-ah 
(§ 1<^7, p. 196), have together led Bopp and his follow^ers 
to call the consonantal combination ktl the root of the verb 
in question, although this combination is for the ear an 
absolute nullity. Nor is he himself blind to this inference, 
for he expressly says : "A Semitic root is unpronounceable." 
As well might he, with the English w^ords hind, hand, hond, 
bound, bundle before him, set down as the root of this 
English verb the letters bnd. 

But I pass to a gi-aver matter, and one that affects the 
whole texture of the book. The German philologer, de- 
parting from the course marked out by his Indian authori- 
ties, refuses to accept the doctrine that all words are traceable 
back to verbs. Accordingly he divides the roots of the Indo- 
European family into two classes. "The main principle of 
Word-building in this class," says he (§ 109a, p. 203), 
"appears to me to lie in the union of verbal and pronominal 
roots which together constitute, as it were, the life and 
soul" (of the language). Poetical escapades of this kind 
naturally excite a suspicion of w^eakness in a theory. I 
propose then to examine this doctrine of pronominal roots 
in some detail. It is one that is also maintained by Prof. 
M. Muller in his Lectures on language (p. 272 &c.). His 
nomenclature indeed is slightly different from that of Bopp's. 
To 'verbal' he prefers the term 'predicative' and instead of 
'pronominal' he talks of 'demonstrative' roots; but sub- 
stantially the two writers agree. As Prof. Muller is some- 
what more definite than his fellows-countryman in his state- 
ments on this subject, I wdll quote a few lines from him. 
"If they (our primitive ancestors)", says he, "wanted to 
express here and there, who, what, this, that, thou, he, they 
would have found it impossible to find any predicative root 
that could be applied to this purpose." And hence he says 
soon after: "We must admit a small class of independent 
rachcals, not predicative in the usual sense of the word 



ORIGIN OF PRONOUNS. 25 

but simply pointing, simply expressive of existence under 

certain prescriptions." I accept the challenge implied 

in the first of these paragraphs, or rather accepted it many 
years before it was given, for already in 1847 in our 'Pro- 
ceedings' (Vol. Ill, p. 56) I put forward the theory that 
such a verb as our own 'ken' or 'look' as an imperative 
would supply what was wanted. In the paper to which I 
refer, the problem was considered in considerable detail, 
alike from the formal and logical points of view. Thus as 
regards the mere shape of the words,- I showed that pro- 
nouns of the third person exhibited an initial guttural in 
pretty well all the languages of Europe and Asia from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific, and from the Mediterranean to the 
Arctic sea. On the other hand I produced similar evidence 
for the presence of a final nasal, and so accounted for the 
form of the Sanskrit kirn which is set down as the 'dhatu' 
of the relative, but by its final letter has been, I find, a 
stumbling-block to Sanskritists. In short I considered that 
a syllable ken, or something like it, appeared to be the 
basis of pronominal words of the third person, including 
in that term demonstratives, relatives, and interrogatives, 
which I held to be of one stock. On the other hand I re- 
gard this basis of pronouns to be one with our English verb 
ken 'see'. But of course I could not rely on our English 
language alone or even its German congeners. As ken^ or 
if it be preferred con^ is the simple root whence comes our 
derived verb k(e)n-ow or k^pyi-oio ^ in precise agreement 
with the verbs bell and bellow^ so the root in question 
virtually exists in all those languages which possess a re- 
presentative of knoic^ as Latin with its gnosco^ Greek with 
its yiyviooaco, and Sanskrit with its jnd. Over and above 
this I pointed to the suffix ce of Latin demonstratives, as 
hic^ isiic^ illic^ sic^ 7iunc &c., and the so-called interjection 
en 'behold', as exhibiting our root ken in two fragmentary 
varieties, much as a particle of totally diiferent origin yet 
identical form, the Homeric y.f^v, takes in Greek the several 
corrupted forms of k8 or y.a and av. Further as the range 
I claimed for the pronominal base ken extended to the 



2fi ORIGIN OF PRONOUNS. 



Pacific, so I quoted from the Chinese itself a verb ken 'see'. 
But 1 failed to notice the simple verb in Sanskrit. Let me 
now supply this omission by producing the reduplicative 
verb in ml^ chi^'^^mi 'I see'. This verb Bopp himself 
identities as regards root with the Sanskrit verb chit 'perceive, 
know' and this again with the Zend chin (V.G. 109 ^>. 2, Anm., 
p. 239), so that the change of ken to ket is no difficulty 
for Bopp; and I confirm this by the parallel case of the 
Latin pronominal forms cit-ra^ cit-ro^ cit-erior^ cit-imus. I 
am further indebted to Bopp for a knowledge of three other 
analogues of my verb, quita or kita of the Philippines , the 
New-Zealand kitea, and Malagash Mta^ words also signifying 
'to see' and identified by himself with the Sanskrit ket 
(§ 87. 2). Thus the area of the verb is as extensive as that 
of the pronoun. On the side of form then there remains 
nothing to desire; and as to meaning I would ask whether 
any idea could be in better keeping with pronominal de- 
monstratives than that of 'see', 'look'. The very word 
"demonstrative" which Prof. Miiller selects for his definition, 
suggests this interpretation; and he himself adds that their 
office is "to point" and so determine "locality". It would 
be more correct to say that it belongs to the finger to 
point and to the voice only to call attention to the finger's 
direction by uttering the word 'look'. It is with this feeling 
that the French has formed its void and voila^ and even in 
such a phrase as Terence's Luciscit hoc iam (Haut. Ill, 1) 
the full expression of the pronoun requires some such 
translation as: 'It is getting light, look, already'. When we 
ourselves utter the word this or that, we do little more than 
invite the person addressed to direct his eye to some object 
at which we are pointing, so that in real power these words 
arc equivalent to an imperative 'look'. No doubt the mind 
is not at once reconciled to the identification of a verb 
with an adjective, mucli less to the declension of a verb 
as though it were an adjective. Yet if the Latin ecce 'be- 
hohr IS a verb, and few will venture to deny it, we have 
a perfect parallel in such phrases as eccwn me, eccos video 
mccdcre patreni ct macjistnim, as used by Plautus. For the 



MULLER ON ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 27 

full details of my argument I must of course refer to the 
paper itself. But whether my theory be right or wrong, 
I trust I have said enough to show that Prof. Muller's broad 
denial of the possibility of finding a suitable 'predicative' 
root is untenable. 

On the other hand let us look at the general theory of 
roots, whether 'verbal' or 'pronominal' as put forward by 
the German School. Bopp indeed puts aside for the most 
part the question of the origin of words as not falling within 
the scope of his work, but Prof. Miiller speaks somewhat 
more definitely on this subject. Yet his views, I think, will 
not be found satisfactory to others, and seem not altogether 
satisfactory to himself, for after touching on the topic at 
the beginning of his book, he practically postpones the 
question to his last chapter, pp. 349-399, and even then he 
nearly reaches the end of the chapter before he comes to 
the point. It is only in page 391 that he says: "And now 
I am afraid that I have but a few minutes left to explain 
the last question of all in our science — How can sound ex- 
press thought?" I find another reason for doubting wiiether 
he is a firm believer in his own theory. The said chapter 
begins with an admirable extract from a work of Dugald 
Stewart's w^hich spurns with contempt "that indolent philo- 
sophy which refers to a miracle w^hatever appearances both 
in the material and moral worlds it is unable to explain." 
I say then that when Max Miiller transcribed these w^ords, 
he had not yet given a thoroughly cordial assent to the 
view of language with which the chapter ends, for he him- 
self in his distress practically summons to his aid the cleus 
ex machina^ first telling us (p. 392) that "man in his primi- 
tive and perfect state possessed the faculty of giving ex- 
pression to the rational conceptions of the mind," and then 
adding that "that faculty was an instinct, an instinct of the 
mind as irresistible as any other instinct." Further in a 
note he says : "The faculty peculiar to man in his primitive 
state, by which every impression from without received its 
vocal expression from within, must be accepted as an ulti- 
mate fact." For myself I can only look upon this last 



28 MULLER ON ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 

passage as a simple admission that he has no solution of 
the problem to offer, while the preceding assumption, that 
language is the result of instinct, seems to savour of that 
indolent ])hilosophy which the Scotch philosopher is quoted 
to condemn. Again the assertion that language first came 
into play, when man was "in his primitive and perfect 
state", seems hardly consistent with the tone of the first 
lecture, in which he led his hearers to anticipate a very 
different conclusion. That lecture begins with a justification 
of the phrase "Science of Language", and then refers the 
origin of every one of our sciences to the agency of man 
as stimulated by his "wants" when society was yet semi- 
barbarous or half-savage; and his argument further implies 
that all the sciences, including of course that of language, 
were things of gradual growth, beginning in what was 
humble and lowly. All this is surely at variance with his 
later theory that "the 400 or 500 roots" which are "the 
constituent elements" of language, are "phonetic types pro- 
duced by a power inherent in human nature", and "exist, 
as Plato would say, by nature; though with Plato we should 
add that when we say by nature, we mean by the hand of 
God." One cannot but think that such explanations must 
have been intended for the class of people, so w^ell described 
by Prof. Miiller himself (p. 364), those "who prefer the im- 
intelligible which they can admire to the intelligible which 
they can only understand." But probably the real inter- 
pretation of these inconsistencies is to refer them to some 
antagonism in his own mind, as between the principles 
which were nurtured in him while yet on German ground 
and the influence of an Oxford atmosphere. 

Yet after all there is an advantage in the publication of 
a self-contradictory book. The WTiter is as it were twice- 
armed. Let an opponent attack a position in the book at 
the same time putting forward his own view, and the author 
has his reply in a AVell but have not I myself said so? 
The advantage is parallel to what one so often finds in 
Giccro's letters. Habitually passing to and fro in his anti- 
cipation of the future, according as he was in an over- 



ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE. 29 

sanguine or too desponding mood, the wavering statesman 
was able in the issue of events, no matter what that issue 
might have been, to boast of his wonderful foresight and 
say "Didn't I tell you so?" Or there may be yet another 
explanation. The nine lectures were severally delivered 
and so probably written with something like a week's 
interval between every two. In such cases it is less easy 
to secure consistency, and what was said in a review of 
some serial novel may apply here, that the author seems 
to have written the beginning without any foresight of the 
end and the end without any recollection of the beginning. 

But before I pass from his lectures I take the opportunity 
of commenting on two other kindred matters. In p. 352 
having said that "man could not by his own power have 
acquired the faculty of speech which is the distinctive 
character of mankind, unattained and unattainable by the 
mute creation", he confirms his proposition by a reference 
to Wilhelm v. Humboldt's writings: "Man is only man 
through language, but to invent language he must already 
have been man." This is a taking argument, and one that 
would be thoroughly valid on the assumption that language 
must have been created so to say at one gush, like a 
metallic casting. But if we include in our view the pos- 
sibility of a gradual and slow development of the faculty, 
such as M. Mtiller himself in his first chapter assigns to 
the creation of all the sciences, including by implication 
the science of language itself, the whole difficulty is dis- 
pelled. On this theory the human mind and the faculty of 
speech react each on the other, and thus "the foundation- 
stone of what was to be one of the most glorious structures 
of human ingenuity in ages to come may have been supplied 
by the pressing wants of a semi-barbarous society" (Lec- 
tures p. 5). 

But there is another writer, and he not a German, who 
as agreeing in one of the two phases of the Oxford Pro- 
fessor's book claims our attention. The Dean of Westminster 
('Study of Words' p. 16) says: "God gave man language, 
because he could not be man without it." This seems to 



30 ORIGIN or LANGUAGE. 



imply that lan^ua^e was contemporary with man's creation. 

May 1 be permitted then to ask liow this doctrine is to be 

reconciled with what I suppose will be allowed on all hands 

as a fact, that the primitive language must have been 

wholly wanting in terms for spiritual and metaphysical ideas, 

seeing that the roots of language in their tirst meaning are 

very generally held to have a special reference to the material 

world. If the Dean's view then be right, at the very time 

that primitive man existed in the most perfect, the most 

spiritual condition, he was yet destitute it would seem of 

terms to correspond with all the sublimer elements of his 

mind. In saying that terms for spiritual ideas are generally 

traceable to a material origin I have in view such cases as 

the derivation of anima 'soul' from an 'to blow', of spirit 

from spirare 'to breathe', and of gJiost as connected with 

gust, with ga9y with yeast (Lectures on Language, p. 387); 

but I must demur to the Professors derivation of soul, 

Gothic saivala from saiv-s 'the sea', and still more to his 

explanation that "the soul was originally conceived bv the 

leutomc nations as a sea within heaving up and down\vith 

7lLZ^^""^ Tr''''^ '^^^"^ "^^^ -^^h ^'^ the mirror 

coLerse VeorTof r^''""T ^P™^*''"^"' ''^^n with the 

consistent wrfhf ;.'%''«r!''^«o„, i„ other words more 

with the ir'd.'' '"* ^"'"-^ ''' ^- M«"-'^ "-'^ '"an 

Tlie 'instinctive' origin of language, as laid down in thp 

Lectures', might to some minds have suggested the infol 
that language ought then to bo the samp fl ., '"^'"^"Ce 
all countries, and that every infant at tl I ''" ^'^^''^^ "' 
l;.fc wouhl l,ave been possessed o,,!!/' '"*''' '^ '^« J""e 
"''."." of things so „„H.,, toTe 1 " ' ' • '^'''''' ''"' ^ <'0"- 
w'th fact. This difHcdtv l,o ev ! 'T'^'y ^' ^■'^^"00 
f' onrc „,e„ts by a little corolhrv tl . •'"'"' '^ "" ""^ory 

'''■^'''"'"^-''--?tr:r^^^^^^ 



BOFP'S PRONOMINAL ROOTS, 31 

Speaking of his "demonstrative" roots (p. 272) he seems to 
imply that the instinctive movement still retains its force. 
"The sound ta or scC\ says he, referring to the Sanskrit 
pronouns, "for 'this' or 'there' is" (note the present tense) 
"as involuntary, as natural, as independent an expression 
as any of the predicative roots." It must be due to some 
unhappy idiosyncracy I suppose that I myself feel not the 
slightest tendency to follow such an impulse, however natu- 
ral, however involuntary it ought to be. If I want to say 
'this', 1 say t}d8\ if I want to say 'there', I say there. I 
certainly do not say either sa or ta. 

But admitting for the nonce the new doctrine of pro- 
nominal or demonstrative roots, let us consider the purposes 
to which they are applied by Bopp and his Oxford disciple. 
In the instances I am about to quote from these two writers, 
I wish special attention to be paid to the habitual, almost 
universal assumption, that if the conditions of outward foj;m 
be satisfied, it is unnecessary to enter into any logical proof 
of the appropriateness of the idea. As the references on 
this head to Max Miiller will be but few, those to Bopp 
numerous, it may be convenient to give precedence to the 
disciple over the master. In the index to the "Lectures" 
under the word declension I find the proposition that "most 
of the terminations of declension" are "demonstrative roots". 
Again in the text (p. 274) we are told that "the Latin word 
Zwc-s" is formed by "the addition of the pronominal element 
«" and signifies literally 'shining-there'; and he goes on to 
say that by adding "other pronominal derivatives" we get 
^'lucidus, luculentus, lucerna &c." What these other pro- 
nominal elements are or how they are fitted for the purpose 
he deems it unnecessary to tell us. So in p. 221 he says 
that "the short i of the Sanskrit locative hridi 'in the 
heart' is a demonstrative root and in all probability the 
same root which in Latin produced the preposition W2." 
He goes on to deal with the formation of the genitive, 
dative, and accusative, but in a manner so misty to my 
comprehension that I fail to pick up a single idea and can 
solely refer to his book pp. 221-224. 



32 BOPP ON CASE-ENDINGS. 

Bopp starts (§ 105) with the doctrine that the class of 
roots he calls pronominal "give origin to the pronouns, to 
original prepositions, to conjunctions, and particles." In 
§ 11 5 he advances a step farther, claiming "the case-endings 
as at any rate for the most part of like origin." Looking 
upon the nouns of language as the Personae Dramatis of 
the World of Speech, he holds that "the original office of 
case-suffixes was to express the mutual relations between 
these 'Personae' in respect of place " ; and with this feeling 
he asks "what class of words could be better qualified to 
fulfil such an office , than those which at once express 
personality and the idea of place, whether nearer or more 
remote, whether on this side or on that." Accordingly (in 
§ 134, p. 277) the s of the nominative is referred to the 
pronoun sa 'he, this, that', fern. sd\ (in § 156, p. 320) the 
m of accusatives masc. and fern, to the compound pronouns 
i-ma 'this', a-inu 'that', and the final t which presents itself 
in the neut. nom. and ace. of certain pronouns, as tat and 
kat of the Veda- dialect to the neut. pron. ta, Gr. to. Again 
in § 158 the suffix d of the instrumental case is "as he 
believes" but a lengthened variety of the pronoun a and 
one with the prep, a 'to' (Germ, an)^ a meaning however 
which, one might have thought, would be more in place in 
the accusative. In § 164, p. 329 the datival e is said 
probably to belong to the demonstrative ^, "which e how- 
ever is apparently only an extension of the stem a\ that 
is the very pronoun which has already done duty for the 
instrumental. In § 179 t we are told is the characteristic 
of the ablative and "no one (I quote his own words) who 
has once acknowledged the influence of prepositions or case- 
endings, can have any doubt in referring it to the demon- 
strative stem ta 'this' which has already in the neut. N. and 
Ace. put on the nature of a case-symbol and will presently 
be found supporting the character of a personal suffix in 
verbs"; so that Bopp seems to think that the fact of its 
employment in two duties is a reason for adding a third 
duty. Most people I think would have arrived at an op- 
posite conclusion. In § 184, p. 378 and § 194, p. 393 the 



BOPP ON CASE-ENDINGS. ^ 33 

genitival suffix s is held to be one with that of the nom. 
and so the same as sa 'this', while the longer suffix sya of 
genitives is the Vaidic pron. si/a, that is, a compound of 
two pronouns sa 'this' and the relative ya. Lastly the i of 
the locative he identifies, like Prof. Miiller, with the demon- 
strative i. 

I might be charged with a want of fairness to Bopp if I 
omitted to report an argument by which he defends Ms 
theory as regards the nominatival s in the masc. and fem. 
In the declension of the simple pronoun sa 'this' he ob- 
serves that it is only the nom. m. and f. that present the 
s, the neut. nom. and all the oblique cases having an initial 
t^ just as in Greek we have o, rj with a mere asperate, 
but afterwards to, tov, Trjg, xov &c., so that there is a 
peculiar fitness in the employment of this pronoun for the 
two forms for which he claims it. However he subsequently 
damages his theory by admitting (§ 345) that originally the 
5 may have been carried through all the cases and numbers 
excepting only the neuters, and quotes the Vaidic locative 
sasmin for tasmin, and the old Latin sum, sam &c. for eum^ 
earn &c. And even this persistance in excluding an s from 
the neuter is at variance with his own statement (ibid.) that 
the Greek orjzeg, Grjf,i£Qov stand for oo-sxeg^ ao~7]f.i£()ov, 
which oo he himself holds to be of the same stock with 
the Sansk. sa. 

Thus for all the case-endings it is enough with our author 
to find some pronoun signifying 'this' or 'that' or 'what', 
it matters little to him which, and to defend himself behind 
the position that case-endings are in their nature of a 
locative character. He fails to see that the pronouns in 
question are but pointers and define only position, and even 
then had no definite meaning in the outset of things, until 
aided by the pointing fingers. He himself indeed admits 
(§ 371, p. 180) that the same pronoun originally signified 
'this' or 'that', 'nearer' or 'farther', the mind (he should 
have said the finger) supplying the necessary limitation. 
But while the demonstrative pronouns at most define only 
the 'here' or the 'there', it is the special office of case- 

3 



34 BOPP ON CASE-ENDINGS. 

endings to deal with motion as well as rest, to talk of the 
'whence' and the 'whither as well as the 'where'. Nay if 
Bopp's system were valid, we might freely interchange all 
the case-endings. But I have yet two other objections to 
offer, which seem each of them fatal to his doctrine. In 
the first place the form he assigns to the case-endings is 
in most instances a very late and degraded form. For 
example the locative and dative, which I believe to have 
been of one origin, have assigned to them as suffixes nothing 
but the vowels e and i respectively. But the Latin in i-U^ 
ali'bi, utru-hi exhibits a h, and as the Greek habitually has 
ip as the representative of a Latin 5, there can be little 
doubt that the Homeric ovQavn-cpt presents the suffix in a 
more accurate shape than the ordinary Sanskrit locative. 
There is still another letter to reestablish in its proper 
position, a final n; and Bopp himself admits that ooQavocpiv 
is the older form whence ovQc^vocpi was derived. The Latin 
nobis, vobis by their long vowel also betray the loss of an 
w, and still more accurately defined is the suffix in the Old- 
Prussian dat. pi. in mans (§215, p. 424). Nay I cannot 
but suspect that the Sanskrit in its masc. loc. tas-min has 
also in the last three letters a satisfactory equivalent for 
the (fiv or bin. for on grounds independent of the present 
question (see Proceedings III, p. Q>^^ note §, and lY, p. 30) 
I should claim tas rather than ta for the root-syllable of 
the pronoun, and this view is confirmed by several other 
cases of the pronoun. So too the Umbrian locative appears 
to have had a suffix men or mem (§ 200, p. 400), and the 
Zend for the dative of the first personal pronoun has mai- 
byd, the long a of which w^ould have a satisfactory ex- 
planation in the disappearance of a nasal. But to take a 
more general survey of the question, I would object to the 
fragmentary manner in which the school of Bopp pursue 
the enquiry into the form of case-suffixes. Each case must 
originally have had a common form of its own, no matter 
to what declension a noun belonged, no matter what its 
gender; and again it is easy to see in nearly every case 
that the plural and the so-called dual forms (which in fact 



BOPP'S PRONOMINAL ROOTS. 85 

are but varieties of plurals) contain in addition to the case- 
suffix of the singular a second suffix denoting plurality, 
either a nasal syllable as in our ox-en ^ or a sibilant as in 
our cows. Hence in our search for the full forms of case- 
suffixes we are entitled and therefore bound to include all 
the forms belonging to a given case without distinction of 
declension or gender or number. 

Then again on the other side Bopp appears to be unhappy 
in his dealings with his so-called pronominal roots. These 
also he has robbed, as it seems to me, of a final n, which 
readily interchanged as well with the liquid m as with 
members of its own dental class, t and s. Thus for the 
first syllable of the Latin is-to- I find a more satisfactory 
explanation of the s than Bopp's own theory (§ 343) that 
it results from "a petrifaction" of the nominatival s of the 
simple pronoun is. But I go further. In his zeal for pro- 
nominal roots he seems positively to invent them, as for 
example ma (§ 368), u (§ 1002), and above all his favourite 
sma (§ 165 &c.), of which he makes a most abundant, but 
I fear most unsatisfactory use. 

But it is a special office of Bopp's pronominal roots to 
supply a corps of prepositions, and accordingly he lays 
himself out for at least an easy solution of the problems 
likely to present themselves. The ideas of 'above' and 
'below', of 'before' and 'behind', of 'in' and 'out' stand in 
the relation of opposite poles to each other. The metaphor 
is Bopp's own. Hence the demonstrative pronouns are ad- 
mirably suited to act as the needful symbols for these 
ideas, and so, what is particularly convenient, as they 
signify at once 'this' and 'that', 'on this side' and 'on that 
side', from one and the same pronoun we may deduce pre- 
positions of directly opposite powers (§ 995). Thus from 
the pronoun a, to take that first as exhibiting the most 
wonderful fertility, with the aid of various suffixes, whose 
meaning seems to be a matter of not the slightest moment, 
for he never stops to explain them, we have S. (i. e. Sans- 
krit) a-ti 'over', S. a-dhas 'under', Lith. a-ni 'up', Germ. 
ent, Lith. a-t 'to', 'back'; S. a-dhi 'over', 'up' (§ 997), with 

3* 



36 BOPP'S ORIGIN OF PREPOSITIONS. 

Lat. ad Ho' ; S. a-pi 'over', 'up' (§ 998), with em ; S. a-hhi 
'to" (§ 999), with a^iq^L, Lat. amh or am 'round'. Germ, hei, 
and Lat. oh; S. a-pa 'from' (§998), with a-no ^ Lat. a-h^ 
Eng. o-f (the hyphens are Bopp's) — and (§ 1007) from a-pa 
itself, through an intermediate apara-s 'the other cut down 
to para, we have no less than live S. prepositions, viz. 
pra 'before', prati 'towards', 'parcl 'back', 'away', piiras^ 
and pari. Of these again 2J>m (insepar.) 'before' has for 
its cognates ttqo, Lat. pro. Germ. ver. Then prati (§ 1008) 
is represented by tiqoti and TjQog', while jp^m 'back', 'away' 
(§ 1009) gives us naQa; and through a second aphaeresis 
a prep, ra 'back' in some other language, which is one 
with the Lat. r^ 'back'. So much for one extensive family, 
all the progeny of the tiny pronoun a 'this' or 'that', in- 
cluding too at once arto and naQa, at once pro and re. 

To the S. pronoun u, if indeed such a pronoun exist, are 
to be referred it seems S. u-pa 'to', S. u-t 'up' as also the 
Gr. v-7io^ Lat. sub, and the adj. v-G-TSQo-g, together with 
Germ, aus^ Eng. out. To meet the little difficulty about the 
asperate of vtlo and the s of sub, Bopp proposes two theories: 
"The s is either a simple phonetic prefix or the remnant 
of a recently prefixed pronoun sa", which however, he adds, 
would be "here devoid of meaning". 

The S. pronoun ana gives birth to S. anu 'after', Old- 
Pruss. and Slav, na 'up', and ava 'up' ; also to S. ni 'down', 
Germ, nie-der; also to S. ni-s 'out' and perhaps to the Slav. 
i'su 'out', "which may possibly have lost an initial n"".— 
The loss is the more to be deplored, as we lose at the 
same time all resemblance between i-su and its parent ana. 

Thus Bopp has thoroughly fulfilled the promises he held 
out, as we have from the same sources words denoting 
'above' and 'below', 'to' and 'from', 'backward' and 'forward', 
'absence' and 'presence', 'up' and 'down'. And then how 
magical the changes. 

With this wonderful manufacture by the Bopp-school of 
prepositions and case-endings from pronominal roots it may 
be useful to contrast a few specimens which may show the 
possibility at least of deducing prepositions and case-endings 



BOPP'S ORIGIN OP NEGATIVES. 37 

from verbs. Thus to commence with a quotation from one 
of Bopp's own followers, we find in the "Lectures" (p. 221): 
"The instrumental (in Chinese) is formed by the preposition 
y, which preposition is an old root meaning to useP So 
in a little paper of my own ("Proceedings" Vol. VI, p. 120) 
it is stated on Premare's authority that the syllable com- 
monly used in Chinese to denote the genitival relation (^tcV) 
is at times employed as a verb equivalent to the Latin 
pi'ojicisci. Again the Sanskrit inseparable preposition ni, 
Lith. nu 'down' is to be identified with the Lat. vb. nu, 
Gr. vev 'lower', 'hold down', and the Chinese ni 'descend'. 
In the French chez^ Ital. casa, and in our own through, 
Germ, durch and ckir we have prepositions formed from 
substantives, viz. the Lat. casa 'house', and Germ, thilr^ 
Eng. door, Gr. d^vQa. So little is it necessary to invent 
pronominal roots, as the source of prepositions. 

On Bopp's derivation of particles from pronominal roots 
I must be brief. That words denoting 'yes' should be de- 
rived from pronouns signifying 'this' can surprise no one. 
Thus we assent at once to such a derivation of the Lat. 
sic and ita and si of the French &c. But Bopp is bolder, 
he hesitates not to deduce the S. na 'not' and Lat. ne 'not' 
from his pronominal stem na 'this or that', the Greek f.it] 
'not' from his stem ma\ and the Greek '« privativum' from 
a 'this' (§ 372. 1, p. 180). And here again he relies on his 
old doctrine that as such pronouns are qualified to denote 
alike 'this' and 'that' (dieses und jenes), in the second of 
these senses they may well represent negation, for what is 
there is not here. It is somewhat unfortunate that the pro- 
noun a has on his own showing a marked tendency to 
express presence (§ 366), as a-tra 'here', a-tas '•ixom here', 
a-dya 'to-day'. Nor is this to be set down as a late in- 
novation in the life of Sanskrit, for its position must have 
been already well established before the breaking up of the 
primeval language, seeing that (to use his own illustrations) 
it is found in the old Irish a-nochd 'to-night' of the far 
west, and in the Ossetic a-hon 'to-day' of the far east. But 
be this as it may, the same pronominal «, once firmly 



38 BOPP'S ORIGIN OF THE AUGMENT. 

possessed of negative power, is deemed by Bopp a fitting 
symbol for past time. "I hold the augment", says he (the 
initial a in a-hhav-am 'I Avas' for example, and so corre- 
sponding to the syllabic augment £ of s-tvut-ov &c.), "to 
be in its origin identical with the a privativum, and look 
upon it as expressing the negation of present time." Nay 
even in such forms as leg-e-bam (the division is Bopp's) 
he once thought the long quantity of the middle vowel was 
referable to a suffixed augment, but his confidence in this 
theory has been shaken (§ 527). 

Even among the verbs he is inclined to think that his 
pronouns play a part over and above their use in the 
personal endings. Of the suffixed t in tvtt-t-co, v in dax- 
v-to and S€ix-v-v-/iu, av in Xafi^-av-co he speaks with the 
greatest hesitation, yet still (§§ 494, 5) "the most probable 
explanation" is that they are one and all of pronominal 
origin, their office being "to convert the abstract of the 
verbs in question into a concrete". Nay even the so-called 
connecting vowels, as in cpeq-o-f^iev , q^eQ-e-xe, must be 
ascribed he thinks to a similar origin (§ 500) , and indeed 
to our old friend «, for the o and e of the Greek verbs 
just quoted are represented in Sanskrit by an a. 

I now leave the pronominal roots with a strong impression 
on my mind that Bopp has failed to derive from his theory 
anything that adds to the value of his book. Even in his 
other division of roots I cannot divest myself of a fear that 
he has been wanting in caution. In § 109/? he gives us a 
list of thirty two root-verbs. In looking over these I find 
at least fourteen which I have little doubt are secondary, 
that is derivative verbs, and eight others that have been 
shorn of their fair proportions, having lost an initial or a 
final consonant or both. On the present occasion I cannot 
deal with more than a few of them, but to avoid all sus- 
picion of undue selection, I will take a batch that follow 
one another, those which stand 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th in 
his series. The verb gnd (ov jnd) is of course the Lat. 
gnosc-o, Eng. hiofc, but in these verbs all that follows the 
liquid constitutes a suffix, while our English vb. ke?i or 



BOPP'S ROOT-VERBS. 39 

rather con exhibits the simple verb; and, as I have else- 
where noted, the Latin participles a-gn-itus and co-gn-itus 
are deduced from compounds, not of gnosc-o, but of a 
primary verb go7i^ corresponding to our con. From agnosco 
and cognosco we should have had agnotus, cognotus. The 
4th in the series, vd 'blow', has suffered curtailment of its 
tinal consonant, and is really one with the 17th, an 'blow', 
which has lost its initial consonant, the two being truncated 
forms of a fuller van which appears scarcely altered in the 
Germ, wann-en^ and is the parent of our winn-ow^ loind^ 
and fan.) as also of the Latin vanntcs and ventus. This 
double corruption of van to vd and an would be exactly 
parallel to my assumption that the Lat. ce and m come 
from ken. The 5th sfd, Lat. sta^ though very generally set 
down as a root-verb, has a suffix or rather the remnant of 
a suffix in the a. The proof of this I find in the Latin 
sist-o as compared with gign-o, yiyv-of-iai, ^il(,lv-co^ nim-w, 
for as these are admitted to be reduplicated forms of yev, 
(.lev, ntx , so sist implies a primitive set or something like 
it. To this primitive I assign the idea of 'stop', a verb 
which is itself probably of the same stock, and I quote in 
support of this translation the familiar siste viator or better 
still s. aquam of Virgil, s. lacrimas of Ovid, s. alvom of 
Pliny, I say better because there is in these phrases no 
trace of the upright position, w^hich eventually attached 
itself to so many of the derivative forms. I may be asked 
here whether I propose to connect the assumed root set 
with the sed of Lat. sed-ere, sid-ere (for seid-ere) &c. and 
our own set, sit. My answer to this is at present neither 
yes nor no, but on the logical side I see no difficulty, as 
we ourselves have the phrase 'to set up', equivalent to the 
Lat. statuere. Again if I am asked to account for the fact 
that sta- and its derivatives eventually possessed as an im- 
portant part of their meaning that of standing or the upright 
position, I think I see two explanations. First the com- 
pound a-sta in Plautus has the simple notion of 'standing 
up' rather than that of 'standing near', so that the preposition 
is an (= ava)., as in an-hela-re 'to send up a blast of air'. 



40 BOPP'S ROOT-VERBS. 

rather than the familiar ad Ho or near'. It should be noted 
too that it is precisely before an initial 5, that the Greek 
am, commonly reduced to av or rather ov in the Aeolic 
dialect, becomes further reduced to a or (Ahrens, de 
Dialectis 28, 1). The assumption that astare was in the 
end cut down to stare^ has its parallel in our own truncation 
of rise fi'om arise, for this is. the original form. This theory 
further explains in a thoroughly satisfactory manner the 
prefixed vowel of the Fr. etat^ etais^ etablir. But indepen- 
dently of this argument, if the original notion of stopping 
be considered in connection with man, and it is of man 
that we commonly speak, the first result of stopping is 
standing. 

The 6th verb t 'go', though found alike in Sanskrit, Greek, 
and Latin, I believe to be doubly corrupted. Already it-er^ 
com-it-ium, in-it-mni, ex-it-mm, comes (them. com-it-\ pedes 
(them, ped'tt-) claim a final t for the root, and the forms 
so familiar in Plautus per-btt-ere, inter-bit-ere ^ red-blt-ere, 
praeter-bit-ere, e-blt-ere (the last in Plant. Stic. 608, accord- 
ing to the palimpsest) exhibit an initial b. I have marked 
the i as long on the uniform authority of Plautus, though 
Forcellini hastily assigns a short i to these words. Then 
as regards the simple verb, Ribbeck has done well to follow 
the guidance of Fleckeisen in exhibiting baetere as the 
reading of Pacuvius in vv. 227 and 255. Thus bat, the root 
of baetere (as cad of caedere\ is the Latin analogue of (^av 
in fiaiv-co^ and so only a variety of vdd 'go', whence the 
imperfect tenses vad-ere &c. We have here an explanation 
of the apparent anomaly in the corresponding French verb 
which unites in the same conjugation, a stem va and a stem 
/, these, although wholly different in form, being in origin 
one, as je vais, tu vas, il va with firai &c. These two verbs 
sta and i may indeed be pointed to as containing the best 
evidence of the close intimacy between the Sanskrit, Greek, 
and Latin languages; but it is in the last of these three 
sisters, not in the Sanskrit, that w^e find the truest forms 
of the two roots. 

If it be replied to what I have here m-ged, that the Indian 



ORIGIN OF AMABAM, AMABO. 41 

Grammarians, when they put forward a so-called 'dhatu', 
do not claim for it the honour of being an ultimate root, 
nay that they apply this term to the base of any verb 
though it be doubly or even trebly a derivative, I still con- 
tend that Bopp applies to his w^ords the very name 'roots' 
(Wurzeln), and that his whole argument implies that the 
verbs so called are ultimate forms. 

It would not be right to be wholly silent on his treatment 
of matters connected with the conjugation of verbs, but I 
must limit myself to the use he makes of the so-called verb 
substantive whether as or bJm 'be', though I may refer also 
to similar proceedings on the part of Prof. Max Miiller. 
That this verb is employed in the processes of conjugation 
I of course do not deny, for I have myself sought to ex- 
plain many forms by means of it. For example I contend 
that such phrases as 'I am a-dining', 'I am from dining', 
'I am to dine' are found in many languages besides our 
own as formulae of presents imperfect or perfect and of 
future verbs; but then it is in the prepositions a (A.-Sax. 
a?i)^ from, and to, that I find the essential part of the tense- 
idea. Indeed the very fact of the verb 'to be' entering into 
all the three phrases is the best proof that it contributes 
but little to the notation. But Bopp and his devout wor- 
shipper proceed with far greater boldness. Thus the latter 
(Lectures p. 174) tells us: "bam in cantabam was originally 
an independent auxiliary verb, the same which exists in 
the Sanskrit bhavdmi and in the A.-Sax. beom 'I am'." 
Again (p. 234) he says: "In the Latin bo oi amabo we have 
the old auxiliary bhu 'to become', and in the Greek futures 
in G(o, the old auxiliary as 'to be'." (See also Bopp § 526 
and §§ 648, 656.) This is to give to the past imperfect 
and the future of the Latin the very same origin, so that 
the Romans, it would seem, thought it no inconvenience 
to confound the two opposite ideas of time. Let me note 
too that the author of the Lectures by quoting in the one 
case the first person of the Sanskrit verb and in the other 
the mere base or 'dhatu' gives a deceptive plausibility to 
his argument, for one sees some resemblance to bam in 



42 M. MflXER ON PERFECT-TENSES. 

bhavdmi and some resemblance to bo in bhu. My own 
views on the formation of the Latin tenses am-ab-a-m and 
am-ab-o are given elsewhere (Trans. 1856, pp. 308, 9). I 
will here merely say that 1 find the symbol of past time, 
not in 5a, but solely in the final a of am-ab-a-m^ just as 
I find it in the corresponding vowel of the Lat. er-a-m^ 
Gr. 7]v (= €av) or e-xid^e-a , and S. a-bhav-a-m. I have 
said that the two German Professors explain the g of Xe^co 
as the vb. subst.; but according to Bopp it is equally ap- 
plicable to the aorist els^a (§ 542) and to the perfect 
Terele-o-fiaL (§ 569). Nay even the x of edwxa and dsdcoxa 
is deduced from the same source (ibid.), a change which 
will prepare us in some measure for a still bolder doctrine, 
that the strange k which appears in the Lithuanian imperative 
duki 'give', is also a variety of the s of the vb. subst. (§ 680). 
As to the office it performs in this place, as in the others, 
not a word is vouchsafed. 

As a final specimen of the sort of reasoning which is 
allowed in the explanation of tense-forms, I may point to 
a passage in the oft-quoted Lectures (pp. 317, 8). From 
such phrases as 'I have loved', 'amatum habeo' it is inferred 
that the notion of 'habeo' is specially fitted to denote the 
past or perfect, the fact being that the essence of this idea 
lies in the suffixes of ama-tum and lov-ecl. And then, as 
something parallel, the writer quotes a Turkish phrase, 
which he tells us is literally "Paying belonging to me", 
but practically signifies 'I have paid'. I fear his knowledge 
of Turkish is not of the soundest, for at any rate the Latin 
phrase 'solvendum est mihi' and the English 'I have to pay' 
sound more like future than past tenses. 

I shall conclude my comments on the Vergleichende Gram- 
matik with a brief notice of the free use made by Bopp of 
Grammatical figures as they are called, and those too of 
the very class which the soberer philologers of late years 
have been disposed to reject as inadmissible except in rare 
cases, I mean the figures wiiich imply an extension of w^ords 
whether at the beginning or end or within the body. Bopp's 
much used terms vorschlac/, eimchiebung^ and zmatz, streng- 



BOPP'S USE OF PROTHETIC VOWELS. 43 

thened occasionally by the epithet unorganiscTie ^ stand in 
the place of our old friends prosthesis (or prothesis)^ epenthesis, 
and paragoge. To the curtailment or compression of words, 
no reasonable objection can be made, as it is the general 
law of language that forms should be abbreviated. 

I propose to take the said figures in order. 

Prothesis. The initial vowels of the words avsQ- (V. G. 
2nd Ed. Vol. i, p. 550, note), ovof-iaz- (ibid. 1st Ed. p. 311, 
note), oq^Qv- (ibid.), owx- (ibid.) are declared to be in- 
organic additions. The first of the set is further declared 
to represent the S. nr or nara; but unhappily for this 
doctrine the noun avaq- happens to be the example given 
by Dionysius of Halicarnassus, when he is speaking of Greek 
words that originally had the digamma; and as this letter 
10 habitually interchanges with an m in many languages, 
there arises a strong suspicion that Fav-eQ- has its root 
in the first syllable and so is identical with our own man. 
This is further confirmed on the one side by the English 
corruption of man to one (pronounced with a digamma) in 
such forms as one says and no one^ compared with the 
German man sagt and nie-mand , and on the other by the 
Greek compounds TioL-^iavcoQ and ^va'^i-(.iavdQoq compared 
with GTvy-avcoQ and AXe^-avdQog. 2. As ovof.iaT- is always 
held to be one with the Lat. nomen, and as this, being a 
derivative from nosco, must originally have had an initial g 
(of. co-gnomen^ a-gnomen)^ we are driven to an older yov- 
ofiaT-, of which yov alone is radical. Indeed Bopp himself 
in his Glossary (s. v.) deduces the S. naman from jnd. 
3. OrpQv- being compared with the S. hhru (gen. hhruv-as) 
is pronounced guilty of having in its first vowel something 
to which it is not entitled. But let us rather compare it 
with our own eye-brow to which eye contributes no small 
portion of the meaning. Surely then if a reasonable ex- 
planation can be given of the Greek word, such as shall 
include the idea of 'eye', we shall have what is more satis- 
factory. Now the most familiar root-syllable for 'eye' or 
'seeing' is in Latin oc (ocidns) and in Greek with the usual 
letter-change on (orcTof-iai). But before an asperated letter 



44 BOPP'S USE Ot AN EPENTHETIC N. 

an, will of course become orp, as in orp-d-al/nog. I suggest 
then that o(pQv- stands for o(p-(pQv-^ or I should myself 
prefer to say o(p-Qv-^ seeing that the Greek language habit- 
ually drops an initial labial when followed by q. Thus we 
have Qrjy-vvfiL rather than FQtjy-vv/tu, Eng. b?^eak, and Qay- 
rather than FQay-^ Eng. berr}/. 4. The noun ov-vx- I have 
little doubt is to be divided as here marked; and I say so 
partly on the evidence of the Latin unguis, ung-ula^ uncus, 
and the Irish ionga, partly because vx is a well established 
Greek suffix, as seen in oq-vx- 'dig' (oqvgg(o)^ the sb. di- 
(OQ-vx- 'a trench', and virtually in oQ-(vyx-o- 'a trench' 
(especially for vine-planting), and so closely related to the 
Lat. or-d-on which has precisely the same for its lirst and 
original meaning. Compare too for suflix ^oazQ-vy-, [:iooiQ- 
VX-0-, (SoTQ-vx-o- as w^ell as ^otq-v-. Indeed most nouns 
in u have lost a final guttural, as the Latin genu-^ metu-, 
anu- contrasted with genuc-ulum (Eng, knuck-le)^ metuc- 
ulosus, anic-ula. I might also have included the suffixes 
vy and v^ , of nt£Q-vy-, xal-vx-, as of the same origin 
with vx. I am myself too further moved by the long- 
established belief in my own breast that words with an 
initial n have generally suffered decapitation. 

Epenthesis. This doctrine is called in aid by Bopp not 
unfrequently, but especially when dealing wdth the genitive 
plural of certain vowel-ending Sanskrit nouns (§§ 246, 249) 
which he says "insert a euphonic n between the ending 
and the stem." ^ Among the instances he gives of this 'in- 
shoving' are asvd-n-dm 'equorum', trt-n-dm 'trium', simu- 
n-dm 'filiorum'. And he notes it as something very re- 
markable that the Zend, the Old German, Old-Saxon, and 
A.-Saxon exhibit a similar peculiarity. Surely then he ought 
to have asked himself whether this n may not be the sub- 
stantial part of a genitival suffix. Had he done so, he would 
have found I think abundant evidence in his own and other 
cognate languages. I have myself long been satisfied with 
this explanation of the en of the German compounds viond- 
cn-licht, has-cn-lage, and our own earth-en-ware, Ox-en-ford, 
Buck-en-ham and its equivalent Buck-ing-ham , as well as 



MANUFACTURE OF EPENTHETIC VOWELS. 45 

the adjectives ivood-en^ lin-en^ silk-en &c. And then again 
we have in as a genitival suffix in Gaelic, as ho-in from ho 
'cow'. It is the more remarkable that Bopp should have 
failed to hit this explanation, when he himself interprets 
(§ 248) the sdm of the S. te-sdyn 'horum', td-sam 'harum' 
as containing a double suffix, of which / represents the 
genitival element so familiar in the singular. Secondly in 
§ 97 and again in § 727 note, he further teaches that while 
a final n in Greek has often originated in a final 5, such 
interchange is confirmed by the Prakrit. On this ^dew te- 
s-dm and asvd-n-dm would go well together. 

Again as an n is ever apt to become silent before an s 
(cf. eig^ yaQLEig, Tvcp'htg, cosol^ toties)^ it would have been 
more prudent perhaps, when dealing with the suffix of the 
dat. pi. in Old-Prussian mans , not to have considered the 
n as inorganic, on the sole ground that mas would agree 
better with the S. bhyas. His illustration too from the Latin 
ensis and 7ne?isis beside the Sanskrit asis and mdsas involves 
a similar assumption. 

But we need not hunt up particular instances, when we 
find a wholesale manufacture of epenthetic vowels established 
by A. Kirchhoff in the Zeitschrift (i. 37) and K. Walter 
(ibid. xi. 428). Thus eqs^iv^oq and oqo^oq and the Old- 
Germ, araweiz of like meaning are convicted of having 
stolen the vowel which follows r on the sole evidence that 
the Lat. ervum exhibits no such vowel. HIsxtqov cannot 
be entitled to the vowel £, because forsooth the S. ark 
'shine' proves the original root to have been alk. Again 
the Greek having the two forms oQoyvia and oQyvia the 
former is declared to have a vowel that does not belong 
to it, in spite of the evidence of o^)ay-to. Nay even the 
long vowel of aX-co-Tiax is 'eingeschoben'. Walter's argument 
turns chiefly on the assumption that forms ending in rk^ 
Ik^ rg &c. are ultimate roots. Thus according to him co?mx-, 
Fwlax-, avlayi- , aXox- , all varieties of the same word 
signifying 'furrow', come from a root valk = Fel/.-. Now 
my own conviction, founded on a long and wide examination, 
is that such verbs are all of them secondary, I do not be- 



46 BOPP'S USE OF METATHESIS. 

lieve in his suggested derivation of auXax- fi'om FeXx-, 
but if it were true, the Latin vel- (vello) exhibits the verb 
in a simpler form. But it is enough to place beside each- 
other such pairs of words as talk and tale, hark and hear^ 
l>luck and pull^ sparg- and otielq-, terg- and tblq-, calc- and 
heel^ stirk and stee)\ hoik and holl, both Scotch verbs signi- 
fying Ho dig', the latter of which is one wdth Lat. col- 'dig'. 

Paragoge, Bopp's instances of 'unorganische Zusatz' are 
numerous, but I shall be satisfied with quoting the Latin 
genctric' 'mother' and iunic- 'heifer', which are declared to 
have a c of this character, inasmuch as the ^.janitrt (§ 119) 
and yihii (§ 131) have no such letter. 

His use of Metathesis however is carried to the greatest 
extreme. Indeed the term 'Umstelluug', which is his name 
for this 'figure', incessantly presents itself to the eye. I 
am one of those who believe the doctrine implied in these 
words to be carried to an unjustifiable extent by even the 
more sober of philologers; but I will here confine myself 
to three examples selected from Bopp's book, w^hich I can- 
not but expect all persons will agree with me in condemning. 
In § 308, p. 60 he takes in hand the Gothic adj. hanfa (nom. 
hanf-s) 'one-handed', and first pronounces ha to represent 
the ka of the S. eka 'one'. This assumed, he holds the 
residue nfa to stand for nifa. By transposition of nifa he 
then gets fani which w^ould correspond no doubt with all 
accuracy to the Sanskrit pdni 'hand'. This taken altogether 
must be admitted to be a strong proceeding; and a German 
philologer in discussing a Gothic word w^ould have done 
well to cast an eye for a moment on the other Low-German 
and kindred dialects. Had Bopp done so, he would have 
found at home that for which he travels to the far East, 
viz. Old Norse hned 'fist' and Lowland Scotch, not to say 
Yorkshire, niece. Nay Walter Scott (Guy Mannering c. 24) 
has: 'q\va land-loupers .... knevelled me sair aneugh or I 
could gar my whip walk about their lugs"; and, to quote 
from a more Southern dialect, Shakspere has: "Give me 
your neif (Mids. N. Dr. iv. 1), and: "Sweet knight, I kiss 
thy 7ieif'' (Henry IV, pt. 2, 2. 4). 



ABBREVIATION THE LAW OF LANGUAGE. 47 

In vol. i, p. 580 note, attention is drawn to an Armenian 
noun signifying 'man', of which the crude form is said to 
be aran. Of this the initial vowel is first discarded as a 
mere phonetic prefix, and then by 'Umstellung' ran is 
identified with S. nar or nr. Would it not be simpler and 
quite as justifiable to affirm that the Armenian aran was 
formed from the Sanskrit nara by reading it backward? 

Lastly in his Glossary s. v. nakha 'nail' we have the 
words: "hib. ionga fortasse litteris transpositis e nioga.'^ 

In terminating my remarks on Bopp's somewhat free and 
bold use of 'grammatical figures' I must be permitted to 
throw out the hint that if by any possibility the Sanskrit 
forms just compared with the classical have been advanced 
to a dignity which is beyond their due, in other words if 
they are after all the more degraded of the two, then all 
the difficulties which have presented themselves, disappear. 
From the objectionable figures prothesis, epenthesis, and 
paragoge we should pass respectively to aphaeresis, synae- 
resis or crasis, and apocope. In plainer English instead 
of assuming words to grow and extend themselves, we should 
have nothing but abbreviation, a principle which seems to 
recommend itself to the common sense of every one. A 
man need not be much of a philologer to account for the 
abbreviation of caravan, forecaBtle, -and cabriolet to van, 
foxel, and cab. 

In concluding these remarks, the length of which find 
their only excuse in the importance of the subject, I must 
be permitted to say that I have written in no spirit of 
hostility either to Comparative Grammar or to the Sanskrit 
language. On the contrary fully believing that the science 
must be benefitted, when the philologer extends his view 
over many languages, especially in the older varieties, but 
to the exclusion of none, I sincerely trust that some of our 
own classical scholars will apply themselves with indepen- 
dence and diligence to the study of Sanskrit. My chief 
object in the present paper has been to check that slavish 
sequacity which has long interfered with the advancement 
of linguistic science, and I lay down my pen with some- 



A 



48 UNDUE ESTIMATE OF BOPP. 

thing like a conviction that my hearers or readers will not 
so readily give their assent to such propositions as the fol- 
lowing. Prof. Max Miiller tells us (Lectures p. 167) that 
"His (Bopp's) work will form for ever the safe and solid 
foundation of Comparative Philology." Again (p. 216) 
"Comparative Grammar has well nigh taught us all it has 
to teach." And another writer, if indeed it be another 
writer (Saturday Review, Jan. 10), speaks of Comparative 
Grammar as "a science which has always prided itself on 
the exactness and almost mathematical precision of its 
method." 



Berlin, priuted by Uuger Brothers, Printers to the King. 



k. 



r" 



